Thursday, November 15, 2018

Quote of the Day: Strange Sense of Familiarity Edition

Ace of Spades is talking about US Republicans, but I can't help feeling a strange sense of deja screw:
Are we going to keep pretending that obvious urban, socially-liberal, economically-moderate establishment types who are always calling the actual conservative base "crazies" and "Hobbits" are the most conservative of all of us?
Or are we going to be grown up and start admitting that our alleged NeverTrump Super-Conservatives are just urban/suburban liberals looking out for the preferences of their fellow urban/suburban liberals?
Hmmmm.......that sounds hauntingly familiar. Professional Conservatives in the UK have spent most of this century selling out the conservative base and justifying it all with patronising lectures about muh electability and how the base needs to stop obsessing about wacky side issues. Suddenly, Brexit comes along and all bets are off.

Call it a wild shot in the dark, but I'm thinking leaving the EU might be a winning issue politically, what with it actually winning the referendum and all, but finally the Professional Conservatives have decided that there are some hills worth dying on after all. They've finally decided to stand and fall on their principles, such as.....

What exactly? How exactly do you get from conservative principles to defending the right of seemingly every member of the Kinnock family to a well-paid sinecure in Brussels?

Hey, this ought not to be a tough one for any actual conservatives: where does sovereignty lie? With the citizenry or with the snoot class? This should be like asking your local vicar who the dude was who did that trick with the loaves and fishes but apparently it's a tough one for members of the party of small government, free markets and liberty.

If the only thing voting changes is which particular members of the snoot class get to run the country into the ground, what is the actual difference between left and right anyway? True, Labour is a party of dim thugs, but the Tories are a bunch of corrupt perverts. Who really cares one way or the other if it all turns out like Monty Python's cafe, where you can have whatever you want, but it all comes with globalism.

1 comment:

Sam Duncan said...

“Hey, this ought not to be a tough one for any actual conservatives: where does sovereignty lie? With the citizenry or with the snoot class?”

Precisely. They think they can muddle through and fudge a solution that keeps everyone happy. Or quiet, at least. Which is what they've been doing with the European project for the last 40-odd years. But there are absolutes. We are not a free, sovereign, united, kingdom if some of us must abide by different laws set by foreigners, if we must charge tarrifs set by a foreign power, or continue to be subject to a foreign court for some indeterminate period, its end date to be decided later. They can't spin this. They can't do one thing and fool the people they're doing another.

Indeed, almost five decades of doing exactly that is what bred the frustration that led to calls for a referendum and the subsequent vote to leave in the first place. This, this lying and evasion, years after year of “victory for Britain” as they blithely sold our sovereignty down the river, is what Brexit is all about. They've learned nothing. Nothing at all.